Google may be throwing a bit of a wrench into the city of Mountain View's plans to expand housing as they ask to modify an already agreed-upon deal to make more room for their newest campus.

According to a report from the Mercury-News, the company is asking for clearance to build more office space before it proceeds on an already agreed-upon development plan that they developed in tandem with the city council. This plan for the North Bayshore section of Mountain View — property that is owned by Google — originally called for 9,850 homes to be built in the area, with another 3.6 million square feet of space going to Google for the development of their new architecturally significant "Charleston East" office campus. Things were going fine until Tuesday's city council meeting, when Google announced that they would block development of housing unless they get another 800,000 square feet in office space on top of what was already approved for them.

Regarding the demand, Vice-Mayor Lenny Siegel tells the Merc, "That was a zinger. That caught everybody by surprise. Forgetting the issue that Google has loads of cash, my view on that is that … our North Bayshore plan shouldn’t make the jobs/housing imbalance appreciably worse."

Margaret Abe-Koga, a city council member, says that in order to accommodate Google's request for more office space, the number of housing that needs to be built must also go up to compensate — something to the tune of 2,700 additional units on top of the 9,850 already accounted for. Without that counter-balance, Abe-Koga said, the development would "negate anything we were trying to do" — which is to improve the city's dismal ratio of jobs to housing. Unfortunately, there's just no room for those homes on the given lot.

The Mercury News also reports that Joe Van Belleghem, the senior director of the firm overseeing the development wrote, "We are supportive of the preliminary approval of a North Bay Shore Precise Plan which includes 9,850 units of housing, 1,600 of which would be affordable. In order to create an economically vibrant and balanced community, we believe the plan has to include office, retail and community spaces, alongside parks and residential units."

The tech giant also argues that as part of the development, they stand to lose some already existing office space on the site, and thus are demanding more out of the end deal. In their statement, they wrote, "The development of residential units in North Bayshore will require significant investment and the demolition of existing office space, while we are also continuing to grow our business in North Bayshore. Thus, the addition of net new office development in North Bayshore will be required in order for Google to develop residential units in North Bayshore."

As Curbed SF points out, this new campus is a bit of a novelty for Google, a company that previously seemed satisfied with fairly nondescript architecture for their sprawling offices. But with the advent of Apple's "mothership" campus (designed by Norman Foster) and Facebook's similar expansion (designed by Frank Gehry), Google clearly wants to show off their trophy building as well.

Related: Google's New Circus Tent Campus Approved, Construction To Begin In April